Baseball Toaster Catfish Stew
Help
STOP CASTING POROSITY! An Oakland Athletics blog.
Frozen Toast
Search
Google Search
Web
Toaster
Catfish Stew
Archives

2009
02  01 

2008
12  11  10  09  08  07 
06  05  04  03  02  01 

2007
12  11  10  09  08  07 
06  05  04  03  02  01 

2006
12  11  10  09  08  07 
06  05  04  03  02  01 

2005
12  11  10  09  08  07 
06  05  04  03  01 

2004
12  09  08  01 

2003
12  11  10  09  08 
Email Us

Ken: catfish AT zombia d.o.t. com
Ryan: rarmbrust AT gmail d.o.t. com
Philip: kingchimp AT alamedanet d.o.t net

Ken's Greatest Hits
28 Aug 2003
12 Jan 2004
31 May 2005
11 May 2005
29 Jun 2005
8 Jun 2005
19 Jul 2005
11 Aug 2005
7 Sep 2005
20 Sep 2005
22 Sep 2005
26 Sep 2005
28 Sep 2005
29 Sep 2005
18 Oct 2005
9 Nov 2005
15 Nov 2005
20 Nov 2005

13 Dec 2005
19 Jan 2006
28 Jan 2006
21 Feb 2006
10 Apr 2006
16 Apr 2006
22 Apr 2006
7 May 2006
25 May 2006
31 May 2006
18 Jun 2006
22 Jun 2006
6 Jul 2006
17 Jul 2006
13 Aug 2006
15 Aug 2006
16 Aug 2006
20 Aug 2006
11 Oct 2006
31 Oct 2006
29 Dec 2006
4 Jan 2006
12 Jan 2006
27 Jan 2007
17 Feb 2007
30 Apr 2007
27 Aug 2007
5 Sep 2007
19 Oct 2007
23 Nov 2007
5 Jan 2008
16 Jan 2008
4 Feb 2008
7 May 2008
20 Jun 2008
4 Feb 2008
Aloha Means Goodbye
2007-05-10 01:06
by Philip Michaels

So the first time I ever cheesed it to the Garden Island, it was right after watching a desultory 9-7 loss to the Red Sox at home that launched a three-game sweep. In the time it took me to traipse about Kauai, the A's would go on a 2-7 schneid, culminating in a disastrous three-game sweep in Toronto. Fans of Moneyball will remember that road trip ending with Jeremy Giambi saying some things he probably shouldn't have on the flight back to Oakland. By the time I returned to the Coliseum, Frank Menechino and Carlos Pena were exiled to Sacramento and Giambi the Lesser would soon be sent to Philadelphia for a bag of used baseballs (used baseballs in this case = John Mabry). The A's were 19-25, 10 games behind the Mariners. By the time the season ended, aided and abetted by a 20-game win streak you might have heard about at some point, Oakland won the division. Let's not talk about what might have happened once the playoffs began.

So with my plane leaving for Kauai again in a scant seven hours and the A's a game out of first place, I'm hopeful that the A's will undergo some similarly dramatic transformation similar to what happened after my 2002 trip. Maybe one of the seemingly innocuous trades Billy Beane made will yield something pleasantly surprising, much as Mabry's acquisition five years ago did. Maybe the A's GM will get fed up with a player -- might I suggest the catcher who can neither hit nor run the bases -- and send him to Siberia. Maybe something will happen to make me think this team is something more than the .500-ish squad it appears to be thus far.

Or maybe the A's will just keep on keeping on.

Anyhow, this is a round-about way of explaining why the game summaries have slowed to a trickle, as I get ready for my trip, and will now become entirely non-existent as I leave the mainland. I imagine A's games will be more than a rumor to me -- I've got Gameday Audio after all, and apparently, the A's network of radio affiliates includes a station in Kihei (though a check of the station's Web site suggests it contains a lot of blowhard talk-show hosts and not much baseball). Anyhow, I hope I can pick up an inning here or there and maybe even weigh in with a pithy post or two in between mai tais.

Here's hoping that this week's trip turns out a lot for the A's than my last visit to Kauai in 2004. Oakland went 2-2 during that visit, and while it held a two-game advantage over the Angels by the time I got back to the mainland, that lead proved very temporary.

Comment status: comments have been closed. Baseball Toaster is now out of business.